Steam Game

There’s a Lot More To It…

I’ve apparently had my Idle Champions account for exactly 7 days, 2 hours, and 32 minutes at the time of this post. I’ve learned a LOT in that amount of time, and one of those things is that the game is far more involved than I initially thought. What have I done in those 7 days?

I joined the discord – there’s an incredibly dedicated and passionate fan base for this game, and you can learn a lot just by lurking. I turned off a bunch of the extra channels, but I hang out in the ask for help and formations sections. There’s also a place for resources to be posted, which is where I headed next.

I learned about Storylines, variants, favor, formations, and so many other terms. The screenshot above are the 12 ‘seats’ you have for characters, and then you can unlock other champions who you can swap into those seats. Everyone needs gear. My loose ‘goal’ is to try to unlock everyone. I was working through the campaign to unlock Drizzt when the event to unlock Lae’zel started, so I’ve swapped over to that for now.

Events are temporary, so it’s important that I do the content before it vanishes. You earn chests (gear) for the champions you unlock, and favor that gets converted to your base favor at the end of the event. I unlocked Hitch by subscribing to a newsletter, and then Prudence, Voronika, and Lae’zel were all from the current event that started yesterday. Tatyana I unlocked from a time gate I opened when I had no idea what I was doing or what that even meant.

I mentioned before that I did get the season pass ($15 CAD) which is all I’ve spent on the game (so far) but I really haven’t felt like I *had* to make any purchases. There’s a LOT of codes floating around for chests, I probably spent almost an entire day just inputting codes I found all over the internet. This was enough to give me a huge amount of gear, gear upgrades, potions, gold, and whatever else comes in those things.

I spent gems on familiars, you earn them by completing missions / levels and I got a bunch from the codes I claimed too. I have 3 familiars now, which I learned are ‘clickers’ – I had no idea I was supposed to actually use them, and I had no idea they’d click for me (or use specials for me, etc). Learning the hotkeys to the game has also been essential, it makes things much easier.

This strange little idle game is awesome, and with the excitement of Baldur’s Gate 3, everyone is pretty amped up. We’ll see what sort of staying power it has as the days continue. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A New Idle Game Addiction

I love idle games / clicker games. These are games where very little input is ever required, they run in the background and you can be as active or inactive as you want and still make ‘progress’ I’ve played a lot of them over the years, and my favourites are always a mixture of actions depending on the day and my moods. I saw a few friends playing Idle Champions in my steam list, and I decided to check it out because I had never played it before.

I’ve kept the game running for days now, and it shows. With over 90 hours invested I am truly smitten by this idle game. There are a few reasons for this, but one is it’s free – and you can find codes all over the place to earn items / chests that help progress without feeling the pressure to invest any cash. That being said, after a week of game play I decided to spend the $15 CAD for the season pass so I could unlock even more goodies. Much like I’d buy a season pass for BDO, it gives me rewards for the season with a little extra.

I can’t even begin to explain why games like this appeal to me, but they’re just light little fun things when I don’t have the focus or dedication for a ‘proper’ game.

Last night I took a small break from Baldur’s Gate 3 to get some actual sleep (who knew, I can’t just run on coffee) but I’m sure I’ll be back at my duo campaign tonight, and tomorrow (Tuesday) is the group campaign again. As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

[Spoiler Free] Thoughts on Baldur’s Gate 3

I have to admit, Baldur’s Gate 3 sort of took me by surprise. I played Divinity Original Sin with my husband, and I liked it but I didn’t love it. I’ve never played any of the Baldur’s Gate games before, but I do really enjoy TTRPG’s and everything they encompass. I picked up the game on a bit of a whim, and then waited until it released before actually playing – and I’m so glad I did.

This game is easily my top 5, and I’ve sunk more hours into it in a shorter time than a lot of other games I own. I’ve got two campaigns on the go, one with a group of 4 people and one that’s just a duo between myself and my husband. The moments have been hilarious, sad, and scary sometimes all at once. There’s so much creativity involved that you could play in so many different ways and have so many different outcomes. I absolutely love it.

I think by now I have over 18 hours invested into it, and I feel as though we’ve barely scratched the surface. In one campaign I play a human paladin, and in the second I’m a wood elf druid. I’ve talked to many cows, owlbears, squirrels, and dogs. I’ve done good things and some not so great things. I’ve pushed enemies off of ledges, and I’ve killed my own team mates (by accident, I swear). The story and narration is superb, and I actually care about what’s going on. I want to complete those little side quests that I typically ignore.

There has only been one case (so far) where I went back to a previous save, to be honest it was really late at night and I just wasn’t making good decisions, and then the dice decided to give me a really rough time on top of my very poor decisions. I don’t regret rolling it back, but on the same hand I also don’t want it to become the norm for my adventures. So far, I’ve held true to that.

I can’t say much without giving away spoilers, which I absolutely do not want to do, so I’ll just leave it at that. I love the game, I’m having a blast, and while combat at times has been difficult, I’ve never found it impossible. It does take a lot of creativity, and I’m glad that there are some less spontaneous members of my party so that we’re not all rushing into things all at once. I am definitely not the one who thinks things through first. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Games – What’s Going on in August

Despite what the past week or so has shown, I DO tend to write about video games here, so let’s do a little update on that.

World of Warcraft – I’m “playing” but not really. I haven’t kept up with content or story, instead I do some pet battles and marketing bits. As much as I love World of Warcraft, and I do, the game is old and it shows. It’s comfortable, but there’s nothing innovative and I always get a little bored mid way through expansions. It happened with Shadowlands and I’m not exactly surprised that it’s happening in Dragonflight either. Don’t get me wrong, I think DF is an amazing expansion (compared to previous ones) and I’ve had a lot of fun, but it doesn’t seem to last.

Wurm Online / Wurm Unlimited – I’ve been cautious about playing much WO because I’m not exactly convinced that the ‘new’ CEO won’t completely change the game that I love and adore, so to scratch some of those WO itches I’ve been playing a bit of WU, where the Sklotopolis server is my home and I have a small deed there I’ve been working on. WO has done some great QoL changes over the years that I really wish WU would be able to pick up on, but the Sklotopolis server developers have done well given their restrictions. They can only do server side changes with the way things currently are.

FFXIV – My husband returned to this game sort of out of the blue, because two of his RL friends are playing. I decided why not, and my little bard is mid-way through Endwalker and level 86. Most of my time is still spent crafting and harvesting, but the game is lovely. I’d like to get more into housing (so far I only have an apartment) and I’m learning the markets. Having 40(60) sale slots has been an interesting restriction that I’ve been having fun working around/with.

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Like a lot of others, I picked it up just before release and then held off playing so that progression wouldn’t have to start over. I have a 4 person campaign with some friends, and a 2 person campaign with my husband. I’ve been having an absolute blast, and while I know there are some issues that hardcore D&D players take issue with, I’ve just been relaxing and enjoying the narrative. Combat did take some getting used to, but now that we’re no longer in the tutorial and we’ve been adventuring together for a bit, it’s much more fluid. I play a wood elf druid in my group campaign, and a human paladin with my husband. Probably one of my favourite games this year.

Cook Serve Delicious 3 – When I don’t want to be around people this is the game I head to. I enjoyed the previous two versions of the game, and the third one follows a pretty dark apocalyptical timeline that I wasn’t expecting, but still enjoy. I appreciate that they have a ‘chill’ mode, and it’s just been a great little game to escape to.

School (and thus homeschool) will be picking back up in September, and this time I’ll have my 7 year old son and my 5 year old daughter so spare time (and thus gaming time) will go down as I do lesson plans and all that other fun stuff. I’m also trying to dedicate a bit of free time to hobbies, so games that I can get into (and out of) quickly are usually the winners. Baldur’s Gate 3 is (right now) Tuesday / Friday nights for 2h, and everything else I just sort of rotate around. Hopefully I can continue to balance it all, but we shall see. Life doesn’t always listen to me when I ask things to go a certain way.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Nomadic Gamer